So said Swami Vivekananda himself. There's nothing wrong in thinking that your God is the mightiest of all; there are a lot of sects within Hinduism itself that have mythological stories praising one God over the other. However, trying to put other Gods down and attacking the followers is not done. People who do that not only do they not understand the other faith, but also lack understanding in their own. The only reason one particular deity is shown as superior over others is for the followers to get single-minded, wholehearted devotion towards their faith. And this should bring one closer to one's own path. Trying to attack other faiths, trying to convert them to yours, or doing any such or worse damage, one is endlessly taken away from one's own salvation.
A person is born in a particular faith only due to his past lives and it is best suited for that individual's spiritual evolution. Trying to do something that someone else does is definitely going to lengthen your own path, in terms of religion, that is. Philosophically, you're free to follow beliefs of the other and intellectually analyze it and compare it with your own. If you're going to blindly follow someone else's path, without knowing what it is, or even without knowing what you're born in, why not blindly follow your own instead? Its a custom-made fast-track path for you to evolve spiritually. There are many people who do not understand this at all. Kindly do revisit your own faith, follow it and try to analyze better. There are no separate Gods, one better than the other, there is only one. He has manifested himself for you in a particular way for you to love him and in another way for someone else to love him. In trying to prove that one is better than the other, you'll have lost one and not found the other!
HH Swami Chandrashekara Bharati of Sringeri was once approached by a foreigner to ask of some way to be initiated into Hinduism. The jivanamukta asked the person to continue in his own religion explaining him that there is a reason why he was born a Christian and not a Hindu. What faith he was born with would help him evolve better than if he converted to Hinduism. Only if all leaders and sages were as clear as our Swamiji, we'd be living in a much better place of Hindus trying to be better Hindus, Christians trying to be better Christians and Muslims trying to be better Muslims, without trying to convert each other to no avail.
hari om tat sat
1 comment:
Conversion is certainly perversion, more so because in most cases, it is done to achieve "targets" rather than for purely religious purposes!!!
The other day, on Yahoo! answers, I came across a Christian who wanted to convert because of a series of tragedies in his life!
I suggested he rather become an atheist, than change religions, for purposes like you correctly pointed out - to no avail!
Post a Comment